Monday, Aug. 4, 2003 | 8:19 a.m.
It could be nostalgia. Or maybe it's a soft spot for the more dorky side of life.
Whatever the case, millions of Americans love old video games, from the most rudimentary "Pong" console from the early '70s up to and including the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) of the late '80s.
And it's not just home systems that have a loyal following.
Players also relish the archaic home computers and handheld and arcade games.
Some might say the love of these games borders on obsession.
Most people fondly recall their first kiss; others vividly remember the first time they played "Pac-Man" on the Atari 2600.
To each his or her own.
The affection for the glory days of video games will be on display this weekend when 1,200 old-time video-game enthusiasts are expected to invade Las Vegas for the Classic Gaming Expo, the first and biggest of its kind.
For six straight years the convention has attracted collectors and enthusiasts alike with its mix of displays, guest speakers, working arcade machines (all set on "free" play) and a museum of vintage and rare consoles, computers, games and memorabilia.
Call it "nerdvana," but for someone wearing an Atari T-shirt, it doesn't get much better.
"I grew up with the stuff," said John Hardie, a 37-year-old New York resident who co-founded the event in 1998. "Being a kid, it was a great time. There were not a whole lot of worries in the world while playing video games and listening to '80s music and having a grand old time.
"Sometimes, I wish we could come back to that time."
With the Classic Gaming Expo, you can.
Besides the pure nostalgic joy of returning to familiar video landscapes, there's a more viable reason for the continuing popularity of these games.
They're relatively easy to play.
"They have a long internal life because they're so brilliant in their simplicity," said Matt Helgeson, senior associate editor of Game Informer magazine, a monthly publication of features, rumors and reviews of the latest in game software and hardware.
"You could just pick up a game and in five seconds you could play and have fun. You get into strategy games and even sports games today, the advance in their simulations and the control schemes are so complex, it's very off-putting to people.
"I think there's something inherently good about a game like 'Pac-Man' where anyone can pick it up and play it. The older games are more akin to checkers and hopscotch -- they're just classic games."
In terms of graphics, the older games have a distinct edge over their graphically more sophisticated brethren.
"Today you have games with huge budgets, groups of 50 people working on the games for years with the kinds of graphics that can rival movies," Helgeson said. "Developers can get in the habit of chasing better visuals and the game play can suffer."
But in the early days of video games, relying on game play over graphics wasn't much of a problem because ... well, there weren't any graphics.
At least, not by current standards.
These days video games are lauded for their realism; in 1980, players were just happy if they knew what it was they were controlling.
Crudely animated alien hordes descending from the sky, small rectangles bouncing a white square between them and a blocky blob that may or may not be a dragon -- those were popular game images of the time.
After all, Hardie joked, "How much can you do with 2K or 4K of RAM?"
Very little, actually.
For example, 4K, or 4,096 bytes, wouldn't come close to handling the memory necessary for one page of a document in Microsoft Word, which is about 22,000 bytes.
"But limitations can sometimes make any form of art better," Helgeson said.
And so the first programmers struggled mightily to match their artistic vision of the game they wanted to what was technically possible.
Sometimes they succeeded and sometimes they failed.
"We remember the great Atari games -- 'Pac-Man,' 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids.' But there were a lot of bad Atari games," he said. "Go play 'E.T.' It was horrible. Some of the worst games today are better than 'E.T.'
"The games that are bad are forgotten about and lost to history. And for good reason."
But that's the whole point of the Classic Game Expo, that the bad games -- along with the good ones -- aren't lost to history.
"You could get someone who's played the game and rediscovers an interest in the old game," Hardie said. "It's only going to help."
Ultimately these old games serve as a reminder of just how far -- for better of worse -- the gaming industry has come in its three decades.
In the heyday of Atari in 1980, the former video-game giant was known to hire programmers barely old enough to drive and trust them to develop a hit game.
Today, though, with millions spent on licensing and promotional material alone, there is too much money at stake to trust the programming skills of a high school student.
"At a certain point this became an entertainment industry," Helgeson said. "It's just as big, if not bigger, than Hollywood and the music industry. It's all corporations now."
Which only makes old-timers pine for the good ol' days.
An era when a joystick had one button on it. When a song about "Pac-Man Fever" was played on Top-40 stations. And when most every neighborhood had an arcade nearby.
"People remember that era -- late '70s and early '90s -- and to them 'Ms. Pac-Man' and 'Space Invaders' were things they were obsessed with," he said. "You get to a certain age and you become obsessed with things you were obsessed with during childhood."
As they say, you always remember your first -- even if she was "Ms. Pac-Man."
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